Two and One-Third Years Old
(October 15, 2008)

It'll
be mid-October by the time we get this entry up; it's
been a busy month. Since the last entry:

My younger brother got
married,

I've had major dental
work*,

I've been sick twice, and

Theron has continued
teething, and has probably been sick as well.

I mention this mostly as
background; we'll explore it in more detail as we go
along.

So, mid-October: that puts
Theron at two and one-third years old: two years and
four months. He's grown again; he's now the same size as
the rest of the children in the Moms' Group** (most of
whom are about six months older than he is). The top of
his head is about level with my belly button. Which,
given that he's only been on the planet for a bit over
two years, is frankly unbelievable. ("They grow up so fast! ")

This is actually something of a
relief. It means that all those times when I looked over
at him and thought, "Ye gods, he's grown visibly since
{he went to bed last night/I left for work this
morning}" ...I wasn't actually
hallucinating.

He's
talking even more. In the last entry, I offered a list
of examples - specific ways that he was using his words.
Since then, he's also taken to... "burbling", I guess
would be the word for it. He's starting to talk
constantly, regardless of whether he needs or wants
anything in particular. It's just... practice. Some of
these are very long monologues; we think -- but we're
not sure -- that he's reciting episodes of Elmo or other
TV shows.

Bringing a Two-Year-Old to a
WeddingMy brother and his wife, very sensibly, decided to
do their wedding in two parts. The first would be the
actual wedding, which would take place on the
anniversary of the day they started dating; this
happened to be a Wednesday. The second was the
reception, a much larger event which would take place on
the following Saturday.

We attended both events, of
course. The wedding took place in the Japanese Gardens,
a section of the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. It was
beautiful, scenic, and -- on a Wednesday afternoon --
relatively quiet. They had chosen a sort of gazebo
overlooking one of the koi ponds for their location.

The schedule had been worked
out carefully. My wife and I dropped our son off at his
Mother's Day Out program -- daycare, basically -- and
then the Beautiful Woman went off to drive the
Bride-To-Be to the event. I played video games until my
brother (the soon-to-be-Groom) picked me up; then we
swung over to the daycare, and very nearly failed to
retrieve my son.

This was because when I'd
dropped the child off that morning, I was in shorts and
a T-shirt, with a scraggly full beard. When I returned
to pick him up, I was in a suit and tie and had shaved
off most of the beard, leaving a neatly-trimmed goatee
in its wake. So, naturally, nobody recognized me except
Theron -- and even he looked a little uncertain until I
spoke.

He burbled happily for the
entire trip to the gardens, while my brother and
I talked.*** Once we were there, the Groom-To-Be headed
off to make sure everyone knew where to go. I occupied
the gazebo, got Theron into his wedding suit, and bought
some food to feed the fish. Theron thought this was
great, and I don't blame him; some of those fish were as
big as he is. He also had a good time running around on
the paths, and generally dodging my attempts to change
his clothes. Finally, though, I had him ready -- by
which point just about everyone was there.

The ceremony, as I've already
said, was lovely. The priest was an older man, fairly
distinguished, and seemed mainly worried that one of the
wedding rings might get dropped into the water. The
bride and groom looked spectacular, and spectacularly
happy, and everything went off without a hitch. Theron's
contribution was to run up and down one side of the
gazebo, burbling happily to himself and occasionally
peering over the edge to look at the fish. He wasn't quiet, but his noises were happy noises, and
nobody seemed to mind.

Afterwards, we took a quick
round of pictures; and I, of course, couldn't resist the
chance to press my luck a bit:

Food goodDinner followed immediately, at a restaurant
called Piranha Killer Sushi, and it was amazing.
I'm not much of a sushi fan, generally, but this was
really good.

Theron
thought so, too. He ate everything.
Seriously, I think he ate about half the table. He had
two bowls of the little appetizer-noodles, a bowl of
miso soup (much of which ended up on his shirt), about
half of his mother's teriyaki chicken, a significant
fraction of my father's breaded chicken, bits of my
Korean-style beef, and I think some ice cream as well.
There might have been some Sushi in there, too. We just
kept setting things in front of him, and he kept eating
them.

After that, I went back to work
and life went back to normal... for about two days.

...And then there was the
reception
On Friday, a significant fraction of the extended family
descended on my parents' house. This was fun, but busy;
and, after a full day at work, a bit tiring. Theron had
a good time running around, and occupied himself with
the sandbox, various puzzles, and his cousin Duncan. We
begged off a bit early -- Bed Time waits for no man --
and went home.

On Saturday we dressed
everybody up again, and went down to one of our favorite
little Italian restaurants for the reception. There
were, at a guess, about one hundred people present, kith
and kin both. Like the wedding, the reception went off
splendidly.

Several little things made
parenting easier. Someone had cleverly engaged a nanny,
to keep the children occupied while their parents
socialized; she was extremely good with children, and
had brought along a great walloping bundle of supplies
with which to distract them. The restaurant, in an
amazing display of good sense and professionalism,
brought the kids' plates out first.**** In addition, all
of the Podling's favorite people were there, and several
were making an active effort to keep him entertained.
Unfortunately, none of that was sufficient; he went into
a full-on meltdown, and spent most of his time in the
back room.

This was probably brought on by
a combination of things. He's still teething; he has a
couple of molars coming in. Between that and the general
busy-ness of the week, his sleep schedule was a bit off.
And, frankly, it was a very large crowd; he may just
have been overwhelmed. Finally, of course, there's the
simple fact that he's a two-year-old, and if there's one
thing two-year-olds are famous for, it's temper
tantrums.

Acting His Age
Theron is a pretty sweet kid, in his own little distant
and preoccupied way. His take on the Terrible Twos has
been pretty mild, so far. It's not that he hasn't thrown
tantrums -- he has, and some of them have been pretty
impressive -- but they've generally been fairly mild,
and fairly infrequent.

Recently, though -- and
possibly owing to the factors I outlined above --
they've become more frequent, louder, and more
determined. That is, if he gets started on one, it's
much harder to distract him or jolly him out of it than
it used to be. Needless to say, I am not
encouraged by this.

Also... and I'm a bit loathe to
admit this... they're kind of cute. As he gets more
determined about being angry, he also gets more
theatrical about expressing his displeasure. So, for
example, a couple of weeks ago he was annoyed about
something; to show how he felt, he took a pair of clean
socks out of my hand, so he'd have something to throw
angrily to the floor. Another time he led me into his
room, so I could watch while he threw himself onto the
air filter and howled in angry misery. Like I said,
theatrical; dramatic.

I don't know where he gets it,
really.

A warning to the
well-intentioned
Last week, as part of our Thursday Night Dinner With The
Parents, my wife came by work to pick me up. She's very
good about this -- she comes in just a few minutes
before five. It's early enough that my co-workers (You
Know Who You Are) get a chance to see the Podling, but
not so early that she's interrupting any real work.

Anyway, as we were standing
around in the hallway, one of them engaged Theron in a
game. This game involved turning off the light switch,
whereupon she would pretend to go to sleep; then, when
he turned it back on, she'd pretend to startle into
wakefulness. Theron loved it... which was precisely the
problem.

He didn't want to stop. He
would have kept us -- all of us -- there for hours,
playing this game. We moved him further down the hall,
and he ran back to the light switch, then turned and
demanded to be picked up. He grumped about it when we
left; it wasn't until we reached the parking lot that he
decided there might be other objects of interest in the
world.

So, a quick word of warning
about dealing with small children: never start any game
that you wouldn't be willing to play with them for,
approximately, all eternity.

Slouching Towards BethlehemHallowe'en is almost upon us. Theron and I already
have our costumes picked out; he's going as Elmo, while
I'm going as Connor McLeod. I don't know what the
Beautiful Woman plans to wear, but she usually manages
to surprise me. After that we'll have Thanksgiving,
which will involve a trip to a dude ranch with my wife's
side of the family; and eventually Christmas, when we'll
find out whether Theron still views Santa as an object
of blood-chilling horror. I have my costumes picked out
for those holidays, as well.

And now, more picturesThey should bring my word count up considerably.

Ice Cream at the Plano Balloon Festival

With his Nana, at the reception
...right before the meltdown

After a messy and tiring
afternoon
in the back yard

Everything below is a
link to a video. Most of them make noise, so
if you're at work, be warned!

Playing with a toy train

Playing the Hammered Dulcimer

In the Bounce House
at a local carnival

* ...Because a big chunk of one of my teeth just
randomly broke off while I was in Chicago for a
conference. Plus, it was a big enough piece that the
whole tooth -- and the one beside it -- needed to be
capped. So, not only did I have to wait until I could
get back to Dallas to have it fixed, it had to be fixed
in two stages: one where the dentist sets up the
foundation and orders the caps; then, a few weeks later,
another visit where we take the temporaries off, make
sure the caps fit, and glue them in place. The dentist
was very good, but yeesh. Getting old suc... is no fun at all.

** I haven't written much about the Moms' Group. This is
mainly because I'm not, y'know, a Mom. The Beautiful
Woman has a lot more contact with them than I do. That
said...

It's basically began as a group of moms who all had
their first children around the same time, in the same
hospital. They managed to keep in touch afterwards, and
now they have weekly outings (with the kids) and monthly
dinners (where the kids stay home with the dads).

We were not originally part of the group, and only found
them by accident. I met a couple of the moms at a
storytime program at our local library, and they later
invited my wife and son to attend some events and
eventually join the group. (Actually, that makes it
sound like there's some sort of formal membership
process, which really isn't the case. They're very
friendly, and what organization they have is built
around making sure that someone is planning the weekly
activities.)

This has been an incredible boon to Theron, since it
gives him a peer group of bright, active children. It's
also been a huge help to my wife, by way of offering her
a chance to get out of the house and speak to other
adults. There were times in our child-raising when that
was absolutely critical to her continued sanity.

*** About video games, mostly. C'mon, we're guys.
Why would we be discussing the wedding?

**** This is the sort of simple, obvious, and extremely
helpful strategy that is easy to dismiss as common sense
-- until you realize just how many places don't operate
this way.